Certain facilities utilize power pedestals that are located on the exterior of the facility to receive electrical power from a public utility. In most cases, the facility is an outdoor electronic equipment closure. Examples of such outdoor electronic equipment enclosures include remote terminals of a public switched telephone network, remote nodes of a cable television distribution network, and base stations of mobile communications networks.
In many cases, particularly with outdoor electronic equipment closures, the interior of the facility is filled with electronic equipment. In the case of a remote terminal, for instance, the facility may be filled with dial tone equipment such as cross-connects and the like, with multiplexers, and with digital subscriber line (DSL) equipment such as DSL modems. The interior of the facility may have little space for circuit breaker panels and electrical service boxes. Power pedestals are installed outside of the facility to provide the electrical service box that includes the circuit breaker panels and other related power features.
The electrical system of such a facility must be grounded for safety reasons. The ground provides a degree of security by providing stray current a path other than through sensitive equipment or personnel. Furthermore, the ground may provide some degree of protection from nearby lightning strikes by channeling static electricity to ground and away from the facility.
With power pedestals, the ground is provided by having one or more ground rods driven into the ground at various locations around the facility. A ground ring may then be formed by using an electrical conductor that is buried and that encircles the facility to electrically connect each of the ground rods back to the ground terminal of the power pedestal. While such a ground may provide some degree of safety, the resistance of the ground for the power pedestal may still be relatively high such that an undesirable level of stray current may travel through other undesired paths and such that static electricity may not be adequately dissipated.